In our recent conversation on disengagement in higher education and the characteristics of caring institutions, Kevin McClure said that he would like to see “the employee experience…treated on the same level as the student experience, because the two are very much connected and that means…viewing faculty and staff and their well-being as kind of critical to the [institutional] mission.”
Kevin and I are on the same page here -- and I have volumes to say on the subject of employee/faculty experience at colleges/universities as places of work. Some short thoughts:
1. data from the US and Canada show us that today's students are experiencing depression and anxiety at significantly higher rates than ever before. The people in the classroom -- TA, contingent, visiting, TT, tenured profs -- are often the first point of disclosure and/or conflict with students in crisis. How on earth do faculty maintain their own mental and physical health in this environment? What is the obligation of an employer to create a psychologically safe work environment for professors?
2. Individual and collective resilience is a practice, like yoga or basketball, that we have to continually work at in order for it to be a possibility. Whole-person resilience means that the individual feels connected to their own vision of success and self-actualization, as well as connected to community; that they have ample time for sleep and recreation, and access to those things, and that they get to experience a positive feedback loop of success and motivation on a regular basis.
3. Most institutions and leaders talk about "better communication" and "needing to break down silos." I suggest that the sheer volume of talk about these things and lack of progress on that front point to a different issue entirely re: communication. Faculty and administrators and staff don't need MORE communication. They need different communication. Most institutional communication I see revolves around the "what" of work. Who is responsible for what. What are the timelines, the regulations, the policies and procedures. What is in the handbook. Missing almost entirely is the "how" of the work, or the affective channel of communication.
How does IT feel about having their domain reduced or expanded? How might a reduction in staff or an increase in student numbers change the experience of all involved?
These conversations require courage and vulnerability -- qualities not encouraged at most institutions.
Wonderful insights. Telehealth for instructors doesn't necessarily create a safe work environment. And creating a new deanlet to spearhead psychological wellness initiatives would not get to the root of it either.
You're exactly right about the positive feedback loop, too. Some people need that in extrinsic forms; others need an environment that doesn't stifle their intrinsic motivation. I used a marriage metaphor in an earlier post to capture some of the values gap between humanities professors and their institutions. I've contemplated using John Gottman's seven principles for making marriage work as a recommendation for institutions. He is not the only one who says that every negative interaction must be balanced by five positive interactions to avoid a negativity override. In many institutions, it's more like 5:1 negative to positive feedback.
I've been thinking about collective resilience lately after visiting Alabama for Spring Break. Not resilience so much as the way a community can reinforce values. I realize that politeness (Yes sir, yes ma'am) in the South is sometimes fake, but it is a notable cultural difference from other regions. But I was remarking to my wife that no parent can enforce Southern manners; those expectations are reinforced in church and in schools to the point that they become an internal part of how young people think of themselves. I think collective resilience can work like that, too. I'm stretching your term a bit, but when an institution believes it is a family, it reinforces that belief all through the organization. Once that belief is lost, no single administrator can bring it back. It's easier to lose resilience than to rebuild it.
Ahhh, yes...this is sparking my brain.... Maybe a stretch, but one thing I have seen is that when admins (it's never rank and file laborers who do this) refer to depts or units as "family," they also then localize concerns, issues, or dysfunctions 'in house.' Similarly to the ways in which we used to think of & deal with 'domestic disturbances.' All of this serves to remove obligation by systems and systems admins to -deal with- the dysfunctions.
I really like the Gottman theory application. The Gottmans' 'four horsemen of the end of a marriage' absolutely seem relevant here. Contempt...at my school, admins went on record saying that tenured faculty should not be tenured, that tenure is 'the' problem (...that was solved by firing hundreds and creating scarcity and austerity competitions and anger-fests). Admins have remarked to other admins that 'the faculty' are the reason why there is little trust in admins, why there are enrollment issues, etc. Stonewalling...at my school, faculty repeated the same questions over an 18-24-month period (re: claims about austerity, the firings, etc) and received different answers each time and/or contempt ("we have -answered- these questions; why keep asking!?").
I could go on and on, but I really think you're on to something. I feel embarrassed that, although this is my area of expertise, it hadn't even occurred to me to apply it here. -So- worth exploring!!
It's possible that Gottman's principles also point the way toward healing. Not sure that institutions can stand in as spouses in that analogy, but people who thrive often have something like love maps with their employers (I know my father-in-law feels that way about Subaru, his lifelong employer). Nurturing fondness and admiration, turning toward one another, letting an employee or colleague influence you, solving solvable problems, overcoming gridlock, and -- most important? -- creating shared meaning.
Very few of these principles are evident in branding; in fact, branding often evokes the four horsemen (for those who feel excluded from the brand). Anyway, y'all have me thinking...
Huge issues you raise....Indeed: what obligation does the institution have to creating a ‘safe’ environment for its staff and faculty? What happens when the administrators are the source of the dis-ease? Are bullies? How can an institution with a terrified bottom line -- our customers are always right, every 10 lost customers = $1 million of lost revenue -- prioritize anyone besides the customers?
And: what you write in #2...I was just ambling around in a stupor, having realized that part of the problem with academia is that there.is.no.feedback. I want to shout it. There is no feedback!!!!!!!!! Tenure was a multi-year slog, capped by the creation of four 3” binders of indexed and collated paper representing thousands and thousands of hours of work/life/“species being” (Marx). It went off on a plastic cart with plastic wheels and wheeled from private deliberation to private meeting. Occasionally ‘the file’ sent back a template form letter, “The committee has voted” or “the dean supports the conclusions of the department.” No one ever said, “You’ve done some kick ass, amazing things.”
There is no more positive “feedback loop of success and motivation.” Nothing inspires. There are no raises, bonuses. There is no one actually listening to concerns or suggestions, unless the suggestions are “have a surprise coffee morning in the president’s lobby.” Students don’t come and say, “I’m still perplexed by what happened in class the other day.” All of this is broken and flawed and a failure.
Rebecca, your point about the lack of feedback reminds me of my first and only post-tenure review. It was so different from the other reviews: more of a formality. I know there are problems with meritocratic raises and such, but if there are no incentives for distinction or no recognition of it, that really wears on a person. Especially during budget woes and other crises. I was aware that if I were to stay in the profession for another twenty years, I would have to adjust my mindset. So much was extrinsic through graduate school, through tenure review, through my final promotion. And then we're just supposed to flip the switch to being independently motivated?
I only served on our Personnel committee for one year, but I voiced concerns about the tepid language in our letters to colleagues. In one case, the final tenure vote was almost evenly divided. In another, the candidate's file glowed in the dark -- and I made a point to tell them, since we could not say it in the letter, that they were a rock star. But if you get the same tenure letter for a remarkable portfolio that a struggling colleague does for a mediocre one, and both of you get the same lifetime contract and raise, something is broken indeed.
Some of this is low hanging fruit. When a colleague and I won a $40K grant to launch a podcast, the press release ended with boilerplate language about how the college was known for excellence in STEM, etc. -- in a press release about excellence in the humanities. In a climate like that, faculty awards might be thought to count for something, but in our system you had to be nominated by a colleague. Some departments did that routinely, and some did not. So then there were people who won awards regularly, often because there were no other nominees. Donors had created awards earmarked for math and science, which contributed to the lopsided feeling. There was no mechanism by which a student could nominate a professor. Awards once came with a stipend that had no strings attached -- I bought a nice road bike with my first award. But the dean decided later, for reasons I still cannot fathom, to earmark all faculty awards for professional development. So you got the stipend, but it had to be spent on books, conference travel, or some other work-related expense. This was designed, it seemed, to ensure that some of the money was never spent and remained in the general budget. Rewarding good work with more work is an unforced error, in my opinion. In those examples, there is feedback, but it is more off-putting than silence.
What a fascinating conversation! I oscillate between fury at the university institution for failing to create a caring culture for faculty in all the ways described above, and wondering what institutions even do that? Is it only individuals that can truly care?
This is a great question -- I'll be addressing it, in part, in Tuesday's post. The short answer (I think) is that institutions are incapable of caring about anyone. This is why corporations were famously diagnosed as psychopathic in the documentary "The Corporation." However, people in leadership are the face of the institution and can, in fact, foster this kind of caring culture. Sometimes that just means avoiding unforced errors -- being a human being rather than a bureaucrat. Other times I think it's about higher-level concerns. Which is the priority: people's wellbeing or policies that are bulletproof from legal liability? I'll get into it more next week :)
I was always surprised how quickly faculty concerns about physical safety were dismissed by my previous employer. I went into academia from industry where this wouldn't have been tolerated.
This is a pretty clear example of Kevin's point: the push to return to in-person teaching was driven by the student experience, not by weighing the employee experience equally. I don't know much about how things work in industry, but the pressures seem different there. Aren't the client demands less dependent on the in-person interactions? I suppose the phrase "the customer is always right" tends to subordinate employee wellbeing to the client's experience, too. So a lot depends on the institutional culture.
Pandemic concerns aside, the safety issues were with things like ventilation and no access to a basement during a tornado warning. I saw it as a reflection of faculty being treated like pests for raising honest concerns, something that was passed on from one administration to another. I'm sure that the industry standards were driven by liability concerns. One time the EPA made a surprise visit to my campus building and it appeared that the onus would fall on the department chair, not on the administration.
Kevin and I are on the same page here -- and I have volumes to say on the subject of employee/faculty experience at colleges/universities as places of work. Some short thoughts:
1. data from the US and Canada show us that today's students are experiencing depression and anxiety at significantly higher rates than ever before. The people in the classroom -- TA, contingent, visiting, TT, tenured profs -- are often the first point of disclosure and/or conflict with students in crisis. How on earth do faculty maintain their own mental and physical health in this environment? What is the obligation of an employer to create a psychologically safe work environment for professors?
2. Individual and collective resilience is a practice, like yoga or basketball, that we have to continually work at in order for it to be a possibility. Whole-person resilience means that the individual feels connected to their own vision of success and self-actualization, as well as connected to community; that they have ample time for sleep and recreation, and access to those things, and that they get to experience a positive feedback loop of success and motivation on a regular basis.
3. Most institutions and leaders talk about "better communication" and "needing to break down silos." I suggest that the sheer volume of talk about these things and lack of progress on that front point to a different issue entirely re: communication. Faculty and administrators and staff don't need MORE communication. They need different communication. Most institutional communication I see revolves around the "what" of work. Who is responsible for what. What are the timelines, the regulations, the policies and procedures. What is in the handbook. Missing almost entirely is the "how" of the work, or the affective channel of communication.
How does IT feel about having their domain reduced or expanded? How might a reduction in staff or an increase in student numbers change the experience of all involved?
These conversations require courage and vulnerability -- qualities not encouraged at most institutions.
Wonderful insights. Telehealth for instructors doesn't necessarily create a safe work environment. And creating a new deanlet to spearhead psychological wellness initiatives would not get to the root of it either.
You're exactly right about the positive feedback loop, too. Some people need that in extrinsic forms; others need an environment that doesn't stifle their intrinsic motivation. I used a marriage metaphor in an earlier post to capture some of the values gap between humanities professors and their institutions. I've contemplated using John Gottman's seven principles for making marriage work as a recommendation for institutions. He is not the only one who says that every negative interaction must be balanced by five positive interactions to avoid a negativity override. In many institutions, it's more like 5:1 negative to positive feedback.
I've been thinking about collective resilience lately after visiting Alabama for Spring Break. Not resilience so much as the way a community can reinforce values. I realize that politeness (Yes sir, yes ma'am) in the South is sometimes fake, but it is a notable cultural difference from other regions. But I was remarking to my wife that no parent can enforce Southern manners; those expectations are reinforced in church and in schools to the point that they become an internal part of how young people think of themselves. I think collective resilience can work like that, too. I'm stretching your term a bit, but when an institution believes it is a family, it reinforces that belief all through the organization. Once that belief is lost, no single administrator can bring it back. It's easier to lose resilience than to rebuild it.
Ahhh, yes...this is sparking my brain.... Maybe a stretch, but one thing I have seen is that when admins (it's never rank and file laborers who do this) refer to depts or units as "family," they also then localize concerns, issues, or dysfunctions 'in house.' Similarly to the ways in which we used to think of & deal with 'domestic disturbances.' All of this serves to remove obligation by systems and systems admins to -deal with- the dysfunctions.
I really like the Gottman theory application. The Gottmans' 'four horsemen of the end of a marriage' absolutely seem relevant here. Contempt...at my school, admins went on record saying that tenured faculty should not be tenured, that tenure is 'the' problem (...that was solved by firing hundreds and creating scarcity and austerity competitions and anger-fests). Admins have remarked to other admins that 'the faculty' are the reason why there is little trust in admins, why there are enrollment issues, etc. Stonewalling...at my school, faculty repeated the same questions over an 18-24-month period (re: claims about austerity, the firings, etc) and received different answers each time and/or contempt ("we have -answered- these questions; why keep asking!?").
I could go on and on, but I really think you're on to something. I feel embarrassed that, although this is my area of expertise, it hadn't even occurred to me to apply it here. -So- worth exploring!!
Yup, the four horsemen align well, too! I'll add it to my list :)
I was going to chime in and say that the 4 Horsemen from Gottman are what really come to mind here. Especially contempt.
It's possible that Gottman's principles also point the way toward healing. Not sure that institutions can stand in as spouses in that analogy, but people who thrive often have something like love maps with their employers (I know my father-in-law feels that way about Subaru, his lifelong employer). Nurturing fondness and admiration, turning toward one another, letting an employee or colleague influence you, solving solvable problems, overcoming gridlock, and -- most important? -- creating shared meaning.
Very few of these principles are evident in branding; in fact, branding often evokes the four horsemen (for those who feel excluded from the brand). Anyway, y'all have me thinking...
Huge issues you raise....Indeed: what obligation does the institution have to creating a ‘safe’ environment for its staff and faculty? What happens when the administrators are the source of the dis-ease? Are bullies? How can an institution with a terrified bottom line -- our customers are always right, every 10 lost customers = $1 million of lost revenue -- prioritize anyone besides the customers?
And: what you write in #2...I was just ambling around in a stupor, having realized that part of the problem with academia is that there.is.no.feedback. I want to shout it. There is no feedback!!!!!!!!! Tenure was a multi-year slog, capped by the creation of four 3” binders of indexed and collated paper representing thousands and thousands of hours of work/life/“species being” (Marx). It went off on a plastic cart with plastic wheels and wheeled from private deliberation to private meeting. Occasionally ‘the file’ sent back a template form letter, “The committee has voted” or “the dean supports the conclusions of the department.” No one ever said, “You’ve done some kick ass, amazing things.”
There is no more positive “feedback loop of success and motivation.” Nothing inspires. There are no raises, bonuses. There is no one actually listening to concerns or suggestions, unless the suggestions are “have a surprise coffee morning in the president’s lobby.” Students don’t come and say, “I’m still perplexed by what happened in class the other day.” All of this is broken and flawed and a failure.
Rebecca, your point about the lack of feedback reminds me of my first and only post-tenure review. It was so different from the other reviews: more of a formality. I know there are problems with meritocratic raises and such, but if there are no incentives for distinction or no recognition of it, that really wears on a person. Especially during budget woes and other crises. I was aware that if I were to stay in the profession for another twenty years, I would have to adjust my mindset. So much was extrinsic through graduate school, through tenure review, through my final promotion. And then we're just supposed to flip the switch to being independently motivated?
I only served on our Personnel committee for one year, but I voiced concerns about the tepid language in our letters to colleagues. In one case, the final tenure vote was almost evenly divided. In another, the candidate's file glowed in the dark -- and I made a point to tell them, since we could not say it in the letter, that they were a rock star. But if you get the same tenure letter for a remarkable portfolio that a struggling colleague does for a mediocre one, and both of you get the same lifetime contract and raise, something is broken indeed.
Some of this is low hanging fruit. When a colleague and I won a $40K grant to launch a podcast, the press release ended with boilerplate language about how the college was known for excellence in STEM, etc. -- in a press release about excellence in the humanities. In a climate like that, faculty awards might be thought to count for something, but in our system you had to be nominated by a colleague. Some departments did that routinely, and some did not. So then there were people who won awards regularly, often because there were no other nominees. Donors had created awards earmarked for math and science, which contributed to the lopsided feeling. There was no mechanism by which a student could nominate a professor. Awards once came with a stipend that had no strings attached -- I bought a nice road bike with my first award. But the dean decided later, for reasons I still cannot fathom, to earmark all faculty awards for professional development. So you got the stipend, but it had to be spent on books, conference travel, or some other work-related expense. This was designed, it seemed, to ensure that some of the money was never spent and remained in the general budget. Rewarding good work with more work is an unforced error, in my opinion. In those examples, there is feedback, but it is more off-putting than silence.
What a fascinating conversation! I oscillate between fury at the university institution for failing to create a caring culture for faculty in all the ways described above, and wondering what institutions even do that? Is it only individuals that can truly care?
This is a great question -- I'll be addressing it, in part, in Tuesday's post. The short answer (I think) is that institutions are incapable of caring about anyone. This is why corporations were famously diagnosed as psychopathic in the documentary "The Corporation." However, people in leadership are the face of the institution and can, in fact, foster this kind of caring culture. Sometimes that just means avoiding unforced errors -- being a human being rather than a bureaucrat. Other times I think it's about higher-level concerns. Which is the priority: people's wellbeing or policies that are bulletproof from legal liability? I'll get into it more next week :)
I was always surprised how quickly faculty concerns about physical safety were dismissed by my previous employer. I went into academia from industry where this wouldn't have been tolerated.
This is a pretty clear example of Kevin's point: the push to return to in-person teaching was driven by the student experience, not by weighing the employee experience equally. I don't know much about how things work in industry, but the pressures seem different there. Aren't the client demands less dependent on the in-person interactions? I suppose the phrase "the customer is always right" tends to subordinate employee wellbeing to the client's experience, too. So a lot depends on the institutional culture.
Pandemic concerns aside, the safety issues were with things like ventilation and no access to a basement during a tornado warning. I saw it as a reflection of faculty being treated like pests for raising honest concerns, something that was passed on from one administration to another. I'm sure that the industry standards were driven by liability concerns. One time the EPA made a surprise visit to my campus building and it appeared that the onus would fall on the department chair, not on the administration.